Mixing Light Interview Series

Hello and welcome to this next edition

of the Mixing Light Office Hours.

Happened to takes place on a

Sunday late afternoon here,

New York City time.

A little bit unusual for us to hold a office hours

on a weekend, but our

wonderful Katie Hinson contributor

and post-production person extraordinaire.

This is her time that was available for us

in the immediate future.

You're in New Zealand, aren't you Katie?

I am, I'm on vacation.

That's how come I'm able to be available.

(laughs)

Yeah, that's right.

When we emailed back and forth, you're like,

actually it would be way

easier for me to schedule time now

than when I'm back in the States.

So we're accommodating her.

And so it's Monday morning where you are

on a blustery wintery kind of almost spring day.

Yeah, is it cold?

It's cold, but it's really beautiful.

So I am, here we go.

I'm in rural New Zealand.

(laughs) Yeah, there you go.

Refreshing, renewing the spirit and the soul.

That's right.

That's right.

Yes, that's excellent.

And so today we're here to talk about

a couple of different things, including, you know,

we've got some intrepid people who've shown up,

some members, thank you all for showing up

on a Sunday.

And so, you know, feel free.

Like this is a great time for us to just have

a round table discussion.

If you have questions, if you want to jump in,

raise your hand, we'll try

to keep it kind of organized

and I'll call on you so

it's not a total free for all.

And, but we want you to participate.

And so we're going to be talking

about a couple of things today.

Mostly we're going to be

talking about Katie's salary--

I call it the salary survey

because I think that's what motivates people

to take this survey is I'll share,

I'll share what I'm making in the hopes

that I will then get other

people sharing anonymously,

of course, so I can see how I'm stacking up

based on my experience, based on my role.

And I get a sense of how I sit in the market.

If you're new into this

business, it's a great idea.

Like how much should I be

charging on an hourly rate

if I've got two years of experience and I'm editing

or I'm a colorist, right?

And so if your entry level,

this keeps you from undercutting everyone

and also helps keep our

pay rates at a healthy rate.

So I always promote it as the salary survey,

but Katie, you actually give

it a slightly different name.

Yeah, I just started calling

it the post-production survey.

I think we were calling it

the rate survey for a while.

We're nine years in now.

I've been doing this for nine years, every October.

It's kind of cool, but it's really important.

It's a snapshot, right?

It did start, as Pat said, it did start because

when I started the Blue Collar Post Collective,

we had a very active Facebook community.

And the number one most

common question people asked was,

hey, look, I'm starting a new gig.

What should I be asking for?

Like how much should I be getting paid?

While people wanted to help each other,

they didn't want to be

broadcasting what they get paid.

And that's pretty fair.

So I thought, well, what if

I did an anonymous survey?

Everyone can just put in their info,

like what they're working on,

how experienced they have,

so everyone can compare apples to apples, you know,

and then just kind of say how much they get paid

and it's all anonymous,

but you can see that somebody who's working

on the same kind of thing as you,

same kind of experience,

they were all doing the same kind of job.

You can kind of see what other people are making

and kind of make your own determination

of how much you want to offer for your own services

because otherwise it's how

long as a piece of string.

And there's not a lot out

there that does that for people.

Some parts of our industry have union rates,

but again, not everybody's entirely sure

what all of that means sometimes.

So sometimes it's just easier,

especially for folks at entry level,

but not just at entry level.

If you haven't actually

gone for a new job for a while,

even I've found that, even I've used it for that.

I don't change jobs that often.

So I'm like, oh God, what's the market right now?

Like, you know, what should I do?

And I find now that a lot of hiring managers

like myself now actually use it as well.

So I tend to get in there and say,

oh man, I'm trying to, I need to hire someone.

Now I have a comp team that decides

how much market rates are for things,

but I don't entirely trust them.

And I like to look at this as well and say,

okay, well, what are people getting paid?

To, you know, what should I be looking at,

paying somebody for their services on a production?

And I think that actually being able to have,

and I encourage production managers as well,

or producers who want to hire crew up on something.

You know, when I was running,

I was running post houses for quite a while

and you know, we all probably know how it is.

We get to post all the budgets gone away

and everyone says, oh, can I get my film colored?

Yeah, sure.

How much money have you got?

Well, I've got about $1,000 left in my budget.

That is definitely not gonna happen.

But I think by encouraging

producers to get in there early

and say, well, what should I

be budgeting for a colorist?

I think it's really helpful.

And so there's lots of different uses for the data

and that's why I make the full raw dataset public

every year as well.

So you can actually just

sit there and take the old,

take the Excel or the Google sheet

and just start filtering and start looking at it

and understanding kind of where you sit

and comparing yourself to other people.

I think that's really, really useful

because there's also questions in there

about how people get paid.

So, you know, because a lot

of colorists in particular

who work at facilities get, you know,

get commission on top of their salary.

Other people charge out

their equipment fee and kit fee.

So I think, you know, that stuff is also captured

and I think that's really useful.

And some folks get bonuses,

which are outside of their,

outside of the salary as well.

So I think, you know, even

that information is useful

for people to understand how they compare

and maybe what they should be doing and asking for

and advocating for themselves as well.

Now the survey is open right now.

It is through the month of October.

For the month of October.

I'll admit I have not yet done the survey.

So I'm going to ask you though,

as an owner operator myself,

like I don't consider myself a freelancer

and I'm certainly not staff.

So the questionnaire will capture

if I dig into the raw dataset,

like, all right, as an owner operator

who runs my own equipment,

depreciates my capital, has to renew that.

Like that is getting captured in there as well.

So I can compare myself to other owner operators.

It's an interesting thing.

I don't capture owner operators necessarily

as a specific data point

within the overall post-production community.

But what, you know, but I think how you are hired

on a production is probably the way

that you should consider it, right?

So is your company hired

and therefore you are staff?

Or are you hired and therefore you are,

you know, a contractor, a freelancer?

Or are you somebody who has a loan out deal

and you're consistently at a

facility or on a production,

but you don't work for that company,

then you would be a

perma-lancer or something like that.

So those are the three categories

because I try to be as broad as possible.

I think a lot of people, you know,

try to be more specific and say,

but I'm not quite all of these things.

But the thing is that when

you're comparing yourself

to 4,000 other people, you know,

unfortunately you're not a special snowflake

and it's actually not as useful for the dataset

to have something that's very specific in there.

If you're looking at the overall dataset,

the way that people are gonna use that,

they're gonna look at, you know,

trends more than anything else,

more than wondering what Pat Inhofer

specifically has going on.

They might wanna see what

somebody who's highly experienced

with very, you know, a lot of levels of experience,

a lot of years of experience,

who is hired out on a production for something.

You know, what does that look like?

You charge a kit fee, okay, cool.

You know, this is your rate plus a kit fee.

This is how much you're working,

the kind of work you're doing,

those kinds of things that are far more useful,

I think, to the large.

You know, it's interesting too.

And when I filled it out in years past,

the way I handled it was as a solo owner operator,

I kind of know what my freelance rate is, right?

Like if someone called me up and said,

can you come to my place and

work for me on an hourly basis

and quote me that out?

Like I know what that hourly rate is, right?

I will tell you that I also know

that it hasn't changed in 10 years, right?

So even with all the inflation going on,

like my base freelance set, you know,

hourly rate is static and has been,

in fact, when I look at editors, you know,

I was a freelance editor

before I was a freelance colorist

and that rate, when I

looked at what freelancer editors

are making now, that

hasn't changed in 15, 20 years.

You know, they're losing,

we're losing our purchase,

our kind of power in the market.

Yeah.

So we do have the overall trends since 2018,

you know, to 2023, because

I can't tell you this yet,

because we're only a week into

in the survey for this year,

is that pay versus inflation,

the inflation adjusted rates are actually,

inflation's going up faster than pay.

There is a small overall trend upwards

in pay rates.

It's not a lot.

Over the entire post production industry,

the overall sort of rate of inflation

that's gone up is about $5 an hour.

But, you know, and if you kept up with inflation,

it should have gone up by about 30.

You know, so, you know, I did all of that,

that's the analysis that I do every year.

So we have the raw data

set that goes into the survey

and everybody can use that and look at their own,

you know, their selves.

But I also do this full analysis

and put out a report every year.

And again, on the website for the, you know,

for this on postproductiondata.com,

are all the reports.

And last year's report,

we actually looked at pay versus inflation.

And funnily enough, the

only time it actually was equal

was 2020, which was interesting.

I think the thing that changed in 2020

was that fewer people were working

and only people who, you know,

probably were at a certain level were working.

So that's probably why the pay, you know,

the pay versus inflation actually, you know,

kissed each other a little bit that year.

But otherwise, I think the general trend was that,

you know, inflation went down and only people,

the other people working

were more highly paid in 2020.

But otherwise, yeah, things aren't keeping up

with inflation, but that's pretty standard

across all the whole

workforce in the United States.

So we're not special.

Pay is usually a lags inflation

is typically what happens.

It does.

Now, and to finish the

thought as an owner operator,

because I know a lot of our

members are owner operators.

That's right.

The way I filled out that survey is, all right,

here's if I was in my market down the street,

hiring myself out as a freelancer,

I'll put down my freelance rate.

But then if you're gonna hire me in my room

in this space right here, I

know what that kit fee is.

And so then I just add that on as the kit fee.

And that's kind of how I kind of get all that data

into the survey.

I was gonna say people make their best guess

at how they should fill it out.

And I think that generally the way that,

and that's how we tend to

capture how different groups work

because different groups tend to have consistency

in some way.

So there are groups that just always have a kit fee

that's kind of put into their rates.

So they do tend to just add that some don't,

and that's just generally quite consistent.

So there is a thing that says that in addition,

there is a kit fee, but yeah, that's cool.

So yeah, you're showing it now.

I see you are showing last

year's report, that's cool.

Yeah, and so you've got it,

you've got a lot of,

because this has been in the

news for the past four years,

and I think this type of

data here in terms of race,

in terms of gender, that's

all kind of new additions.

I think you probably started picking that up

about four years ago or so,

five years ago, wasn't it?

No, I started doing, no, I've been doing that.

I've been doing that since about 2017 or 2018.

Okay, all right, so you were on that early.

And yeah, and then there's also by,

location, and I love the breakdown here

of the various crafts that you're capturing.

Yeah, I think it's important,

because I think there is a

big difference, obviously,

between whether you're in one of the major,

the New York or LA versus the rest of the country,

but I think it's really important for folks

to see what the difference is,

because one of the cool

things that I saw was the change

and how much that matters,

whether or not you need to move

to LA to have a career.

And I think that was

something that we really saw change.

And you can see there, a location affects pay,

that in 2020, it really

didn't matter where you were.

And as you can see, kind of go back to the office,

2022, but then 2023, the strikes happened.

And suddenly, again, it didn't matter so much.

So I think there's, I'm really interested

to see how those trends continue.

Tony's got his hand up.

Oh, Tony, yeah, come on up, Tony.

Sarah, Katie, first of all,

I wanna thank you profusely.

You are my post-production superhero.

(laughing)

Thank you.

You are just stellar.

And let me tell you why.

I was in an interesting situation

where a good friend of mine,

his daughter is considering

entering the post-production industry.

And I didn't want to discourage them,

given the situation, the way it is right now

here in the States,

particularly, I'm in Los Angeles.

And I said, if I could only provide some,

what I call Intel, some intelligence reports

that would give them an understanding of like,

what is the past and what is the future is?

And your report was it, was it, Katie.

And I felt--

Oh, that's awesome.

I felt that I could empower his child

to, I don't wanna tell

them, don't even consider this.

It's not worthwhile.

I said, give them the Intel, let them assess it

and let them make a decision

as to what's best for their future.

The girl is, I think, 16 or 17.

And I said, and so I'm constantly sending articles

that I found about this, but

yours was so comprehensive.

Anyway, I wanna thank you again,

because I think together we made a difference

in some young person's life,

knowing what they're gonna do with their career.

So thank you again.

Oh, that's really cool, Tony.

And thank you.

I think it's so important to be able to,

help, really help folks coming into the industry.

I think there are a lot of young people today

who are really worried,

especially with all the headlines about AI

and the end of creative

careers and all that sort of thing.

And I think it's really cool for us to be able to,

you know, those of us who are professionals,

who have made a career,

to be able to really speak to those thinking

about a career in our industry,

you know, with all of the information that we have,

as well as the data we

have from our own experience.

So just to be able to help them and encourage them.

And the one of the things that I always like to say

is that where you or I or any of us started

or thought we were gonna be when we were 16,

is not where we've ended up, for most of us.

And I was pretty sure I knew

exactly what I wanted at that age,

I was that kind of kid.

But there's so many roles in this industry

that you don't even know exist until you get there.

And roles that didn't exist

when I started that exist now.

And so I think it's really cool, Tony,

that you were able to provide that information

and have that, you know,

and have that information to be able to provide,

especially for the parents.

Just so that they can make that decision.

Because I think it's a great place.

I think this industry is a

great place for everybody.

Yeah, the one thing I will add in closing,

the reason that I always try to do that

is because I felt somebody when I was 15,

was able to guide me and tell me

when I asked them the questions.

I think we're from a generation where, you know,

I consider I came from the analog generation.

I think things were a lot more simpler to get in.

You just have to be willing to prove to somebody

that you were a worthwhile investment.

So I was looking at that at my age,

and I encourage everybody to do this,

is we have to pay it forward to pay it back.

I guess that's what I'm looking for.

But ultimately what it comes

down to is knowledge is power,

and power is the catalyst to positive change.

We just got to go out and find that.

So your report was part of it.

So once again, thank you.

Thank you so much. You are my superhero.

Aw, thank you. That's really sweet.

Look, I think this is why it's done.

I think the knowledge is so important,

and the more that we're able and

empowered to share with each other,

even though we're fragmented in our industry a lot,

especially freelancers,

the ability for us to have a vehicle like this

where we can actually share knowledge,

and knowledge is power.

I really think it is.

And I think that we can empower each other

to advocate for ourselves in negotiations,

to get a good rate, to keep rates good,

and nice and strong as much as we can.

I think that's really cool,

and I love that we can use that for that.

And the other thing in

terms of knowledge being power

and the transparency there is I

also think that you can't improve

what you don't measure.

And I see that from a business perspective

and from a community perspective.

And the reason why I do the analysis

and put the information out

there about where we can do better

in terms of gender pay gaps,

racial pay gaps, things like that,

is because I think that a lot of

these things are done the easy way.

I think people look at

encouraging people into the industry

and not thinking about actually,

and not actually acknowledging where

exactly we can target those efforts

to make more meaningful impact.

So one of the things that I like

to show with my data analysis is,

hey, look, here's somewhere

where we actually need to target

and maybe put more energy into

making things more fair and equitable

and encouraging people.

And so that's something as well,

I think it's worth looking at and exploring.

So Pat is going to ask a question for Jamie.

All right.

I'm not sure I'm going to be able to fully

represent what Jamie's asking.

I'll give it a shot so because

it gets a little complicated.

So Jamie asks, I'm experimenting

with dropping my day rate for one client

on the basis that I get more

of a pro rata part time salary

rather than my freelance day rate.

If I say X dollars or X pounds

per day times four days per week

times four weeks per month

times 11 months in a year,

then I'm happy it's a competitive salary.

But if I take my pro rata half time,

but it ends up being kind of ad hoc bookings,

then my pound, that X, the dollars per hour

is way lower than a competitive freelance day rate.

Do these calculations seem a reasonable guide?

Any thoughts?

Maybe, Katie, maybe you want to restate that and

then see if you can answer it.

Yeah.

I kind of get what you're saying.

And it's something that a lot of

people had to try and calculate.

And I strongly suggest that you

actually look at those calculations

probably a little bit more deeply.

So what you're essentially saying is that if you

lower your rate for this one

client, you'll get more consistent work.

And more consistent work, you know that there is

more that you can kind of

assume you're going to get.

And therefore, you can kind of

predict a little bit more of your income.

And if you do that prediction

of what you assume will continue

because you've lowered your rate, then it turned

out to be a reasonable salary.

However, if you were to-- and

the risk that you're taking there

is that it is not going to be that consistent.

And you've gone and lowered your rate

for something that's not consistent.

And then that kind of sucks.

I'm assuming that's the

summary of what you're asking, Jamie.

And I think that that's probably

a really good thing for this group

as a roundtable to talk about.

Now, I've given a lot of colorists in my specialty

in terms of business advice.

I think a lot of colorists have gone from being--

have been gone from being staffed to being--

there we go-- have gone from being

staffed to being these solopreneurs.

And it's a trend that we've seen

over the last couple of decades.

And one of the things about that I learned when I

went and studied business

from being just in post-production was that a lot

of people who start up businesses

are not people who come from a business background

but who come from being whatever they are.

And I say, bakers start a

bakery because they like to bake,

not because they like business.

And the same goes for colorists.

So the more I am able to share

the education that I got in business

and starting small businesses and

running small businesses, the better.

So there is an insight there where I

talk about how to do your finances.

And it's something that I've

coached a number of people doing.

But that's-- there's-- there are

different ways to understand, you know,

the calculations, how much

you think you're going to get.

So you kind of need to

start with all these exercises.

And I guarantee you, Jamie's

done that because he loves to--

he's good at following my advice.

And then you're going to

need to understand, you know,

how you can have flex rates.

So you can have these different--

now that you can look down here,

we have Pat scrolling down.

I do this with people.

And it's usually where you can break

it down to multiple different rates

for different kinds of work.

So what Jamie can do here is

understand that for this different client--

because some people will say, well, I've got these

clients that I really like working for,

but they don't have the budget.

And then I get these ones that have big budget.

So we might talk about commercials

versus TV versus films, for example.

You can see in this example, we've

got a rate for commercials and films,

different rate for TV clients, for example.

So you just need to understand, you know, if you

don't make it in the lower rate

and the number of days per month you have to do the

TV work or the lower work

in order to get the amount that you need for your

salary that you do want to pay yourself,

then you know that you're

going to have to go out there.

And if you're not doing the

work for the steady clients,

it's going to get you a lower rate.

You're going to have to go

hustle and get a higher one in a month

to make the amount of money you need to make to pay

yourself the salary you want to pay yourself.

So that's how we work it out

and we look at it in terms of...

Because it's really common. It's really common.

Most people, I think, have this kind of situation.

They'll have a steady client

that they get a lower rate for,

but it's worth it because it's fairly steady.

It'll be like a TV show or

something that's, you know,

a lot of people have a reality show, for example,

that they just do for years over and over again,

and it pays about half as

much as their normal rate,

but they know it's always going to come in.

And they just know that if

they're going to do that,

they need to get a certain

amount of other work or that work

in order to get the salary

that they want to pay themselves.

So I think that's kind of the calculation that you

need to do to work that one out.

And it's always got to start from how much your

expense and your depreciation

and all of those other things, and then how much do

you want to pay yourself?

Because a lot of people forget when they start

running their own business

to pay themselves a salary.

They forget about the

costs that they have to go out,

and they think they've got to pay rent and they've

got to do all these things.

But they actually forget to pay themselves,

and they forget to give themselves insurance,

and they forget to give themselves things like

retirement planning and savings

and all of those other things.

And equipment replacement.

Exactly. You've always got

to think about those things.

And that's how you need to

work out what your rate is.

That's how you need to figure it out.

You need to figure it out by

starting with those things,

and then you go, "Well, I have to charge this."

And you can have these multiple

rates, like Jamie's talking about doing.

I think it's a really good way to do it.

It's very, very common.

They have multiple rates because

you want to be open to be working

for different kinds of clients.

You can't just have a single rate,

and you know that you're going to end up suffering,

that you can't always take on every kind of client,

and sometimes you need to be

able to be flexible in that way.

So once you do that kind of...

If you do that kind of calculation,

you can understand where you can be flexible

and what that means if you do need to be flexible.

The other thing I always recommend having

is what we call a runway in business,

which is a specific savings that is...

The runway is how long could you last,

paying yourself and all your bills, without work?

So your runway in life is

very useful, as is in business,

but your runway is how many

months can you survive without work?

So it's good to have a minimum three-month runway,

just in savings,

and that includes paying your own salary

and your expenses and everything else.

So if that cost per month,

once you've done all your calculations,

is say $5,000, for example,

then you need to have $15,000 in savings.

That's your runway.

And some people might have six-month runway

and are very comfortable.

Some people have a year runway.

One year...

I knew that I had a year's runway and it was great,

and so I decided to take a sabbatical

just to see how long it took before I got bored

and wanted to work again, which was nice.

Folks who had decent runways

were able to get through COVID

and through the pandemic

shutdowns without freaking out so much.

It's a really good anxiety reducer

when you are a small business or a freelancer.

And I think that's a really,

really useful thing to have.

So you don't freak out when you take risks.

And it's great to be able to take risks creatively,

I think, especially.

You know, sometimes you'll say,

"Look, I don't know if I'm going to

be able to make any money on this show,

but I really love it.

It's a film that's really cool and

it might be really valuable to me."

Then if you have the runway,

then you can take that risk.

So I think that's a really

valuable financial bit of advice

that I like to give to people who

want to start their own business

or go through that.

Jamie, did we manage to help you

when I rambled on about different ways of

organizing your finances?

Yes, thanks. Yeah. Thanks

for sharing that insight too.

Good.

That insight is brilliant.

I went to it in the chat.

And I'll also link to it when

this insight goes up on the website.

And the Google spreadsheet I

showed there is embedded in there.

You just want to download it, copy it yourself,

and then start filling out those numbers

because, Jamie, I will tell you, I kind of

summarizing everything Katie said there,

if I had to take that and turn it into a Google

summary of two sentences.

Go on AI, Pat.

Yeah, I'm going to go AI on you.

So ChatPat says that, "No, you

should not take that hourly rate

and multiply it times four

weeks, times five days a week,

times 52 weeks a year,

because you are not going to be working that much

and you will be kidding

yourself. You'll end up way short.

You need to make it...

It needs to reasonably reflect

the reality of your situation.

And that Google spreadsheet will get you there.

But it will also allow you to

take that risk that you need to take,

because that is completely normal that you need to

take those lower paid jobs

to have the certainty of more work.

But you need to understand what that means,

that if you've got a rate

that's going to allow you,

if you work that many days

in the year, to be just fine,

but you need to know that if

that takes a turn downwards,

here's how you're going to make it

up. You're going to get one commercial.

So you're going to go out there and you know,

you know, because you've done the calculations,

that if that starts to dry out,

you just need to do one commercial.

Cool, I can do that. I can

hustle, I can get one commercial,

and then I'm good for the month.

You know what that actually takes.

And you don't have to go,

because what most people do is they go,

"Oh, shit, it's starting to dry

out. I'm going to need 10 commercials.

Oh, shit." Right? No, you don't.

You've done the calculations and

you know you just need to do one.

So that's what's really valuable about doing that

and doing it proactively,

is that you know what you

need to just live comfortably,

get your savings and do all of

those other things you need to do.

You need, say, four of these jobs that you're

thinking about taking in a week,

or one commercial, or one class, you know.

And that's the cool thing

that you can just work out

and you feel a lot less freaked out

about taking the rest of your life

on those other jobs.

So that's my advice to you. Cool.

Now, does anyone else have any questions?

Feel free to just open up your mic

and jump in if you have questions,

especially on this topic of

pay, setting your rate, kind of...

Yeah, money, anything related to money.

Katie's great on this.

I mean, and Katie, I guess, you know, one of the

things that makes you so good

on this topic is you're both an

artist, you've been the artist,

and now you've also been management.

And you see and understand

the decisions of management,

how they see the artist versus how you thought...

When you first got into that,

when you made that transition,

were you surprised by what you learned,

or were you already pretty

sophisticated about how you set your rates

and all of that stuff?

Not so much surprised, but I

loved having the information as power,

and I loved suddenly getting insights into why

things are done the way they're done.

So there was that side of it, and then there was

also the fact that I also studied business.

I went kind of back to school and studied business,

and particularly focused on

small businesses and startups,

because I thought that they had a lot more

alignment with the post-production industry,

small businesses and startups.

In fact, the way that startups are funded is

exactly the way films are funded,

which is fascinating to me.

So, you know, I had that,

and I also had the insights,

and the cool thing was that

the way Colorists are paid is,

I think, the most interesting part of our business.

And now that I have the power of knowledge,

I spend as much time as I can

coaching Colorists to get paid better.

I love it when Colorists are...

especially the big

Colorists that are at the big shops,

because the way they're paid is super complex,

and there's a whole bit of math at the back end on

how much we want to offer a

Colorist and how they get paid.

And because Colorists for

post-houses today are the commodity.

The Colorist is the commodity.

So if you're at a post-house, know that.

You are, unfortunately, a walking check.

You are.

And that's the way you're saying.

You are the thing that they are selling.

And so it's really

interesting to frame it that way,

and to understand how

Colorists in those situations,

once you have a certain

amount of billing in a year,

you become the commodity.

And it's a different way that you get paid.

And knowing that, and being

able to say to go out to...

I go out to Colorists now, and I say,

"You actually are at a point in your career where

you can start getting paid this way."

And that's why there are these Colorists in

Hollywood that get paid

this stupid amount of money.

There's a different way that they're paid.

There's a totally different economics.

And so I love to go to these people and say,

"You know, you're actually good enough for this.

You are, and if you're not paying you this way,

you need to start to ask them to pay you that way."

And the math behind it, and helping people

negotiate really much better rates,

knowing what it looks like from both sides,

and what it looks like under the hood at the back

end of how it's calculated,

then I can say, "You can

actually ask for up to this amount,"

because they will say, "Yes,"

because of the economics behind it.

So being able to just get

people that information is so cool.

Now, we've talked about with you on

Mixing Light in a previous insight,

exactly how this happens with the big facilities,

how the commission structure and all of that.

Yeah.

But from the facility side, though,

are they willing to do that because the Colorist

brings in the rest of the job?

It's bringing them in from pre-production,

and they know that by locking down the Colorist,

they're kind of getting the whole

pipeline, or is it just simply...

No, it's not. It's not.

No, it's not.

It's because they can command the money.

It's both.

It tends to be that the Colorists

have the relationships with DPs.

And so the best bit of sales that you

can do is to have the right Colorist,

who has the relationships with DPs.

Or there'll be a Colorist who's just

so good a DP wants to work with them.

And I think as you all are as Colorists,

you make relationships.

A lot of the Colorist work

is all about relationships,

as editors are as well.

You know, if you're in the

room with somebody with a client,

then you have relationships with clients.

That's how you do your business.

So if the facility has you,

the facility has your clients.

So that's the thing.

They don't have to go out and get clients.

The clients are going to go with people they like.

So when they buy a Colorist, they buy the

Colorist's Rolodex or contact list.

And so that's really what it comes down to.

And there is a point where it's really worthwhile

for a facility to buy a Colorist.

And that is when you have a

billing, total billing in a year.

So exclusive of costs or anything like that.

Just full on account.

Gross billings.

Gross billings had about a million dollars a year.

So now that sounds like a lot of money,

because not everyone's making a million dollars a

year, but neither are they.

It's how much over a whole year.

And that might be three or four feature films.

That's not a whole lot.

So really, once that gross billing can potentially

be a million dollars a year, that's when you become

somebody who is extremely valuable

to a larger facility.

Smaller facilities, if you're billing gross under a

million, you are still valuable to

a smaller facility, but you won't necessarily get

paid with that commission structure.

So the commission structure is where they know they

see you as a million dollar check.

And when they see you as a million dollar check,

then you have a lot more power to be

able to make those kinds of

negotiations for really good pay.

I noticed in the last 2023, I think it was a 2023

pay survey or survey, there was a differentiation

between the type of work you did.

So when you were doing commercials versus long form

versus serial television, there

were some pretty significant,

especially for commercials, right?

When you're working on

commercials, you get paid a lot more.

Do you find that within that pay structure, if

that's what you're aspiring aspiring to

be able to make that kind of money and really give

up what you need to give up in your life

to fit into that system, right?

Do those colorists, are they like focused on making

sure they have a lot of commercial

DPs or is it like anybody in any one of those slots

can fit into these big post houses and

start working off a commission

and or do you really need to focus?

Yeah, no, anybody can.

And I think everybody when they get to a certain

level in their career, it starts to focus

on a certain kind of client, you

just get really good at certain things.

You really enjoy doing a certain kind of thing.

There are some people who just really freaking love

doing commercials and music videos, and

it's their specialty.

And it's what they really love doing.

And they're really good at it.

And so a post house that wants to do or does a lot

of high end commercials will come and

invite you to come in and

work for them, for example.

So when I was developing post houses that do like

wanted to get into Super Bowl commercials,

you go find the colorist that

does super well commercials.

And if you are doing feature films, there are also

indies versus there are colorists that

make massive amounts of money doing indies.

That's their thing.

And then there are the ones that

do the big Hollywood tent poles.

And there are actually ones who

do really good high end television.

They tend to be more technical.

People like Rory Gordon, who is a color scientist

and colorist when it comes to specialized

for streaming shows, the high end stuff, because

she can handle the HDRness of it, all of the

different those different things and do really

beautiful things within a very technical thing.

Like that's her that's her specialty.

So she has a great amount

of value to people as well.

So it really depends.

Everybody specializes in

something and has their niche.

We also as we mature in our careers.

So there is a place for everybody at the high end.

There really is even in even in reality shows there

is a place for everybody at the high

end of everything.

Where there's money, there is a place for people at

that end of where the money is.

And I think it's really about what you enjoy

because what you enjoy, you'll get good at.

So I think I think what I'm hearing from you then

is as you're developing your career,

you know, focus on relationships, find the DP you

like to work with and then get that

and then work with that DP to keep coming back as

they grow, you grow and and then and

then have a couple of those.

And then while doing that,

figure out what it is you love to do.

And it might be a mix of everything.

It might be a subspecialty.

And then just keep going down that path.

And all of those things are valuable to post

houses, to the high end post houses.

It is it is important to have a mix of colorists so

that you get a mix of clients and so you

don't put all your eggs in one basket.

And that includes colorists that are really awesome

at doing lots of different things

and colorists that are

really awesome at doing one thing.

You know, there are colorists who are just known as

one director's colorist, but that

director only does hundred million dollar films.

And there are colorists who are just known as you

can throw anything at them and they'll

be amazing at it.

And that's also important because just like I was

saying to Jamie before, you have to

have that you have to understand the economics of

of variation and what you do as well.

And I'm guessing this also applies to editors, VFX

artists, audio mixers, people like that.

Right.

It does.

For the most part.

Yeah, I think there's a there's a

place at the high end where everybody.

Even folks that that, you know, whose careers have

changed, there's always a place for the

high end of everything.

So, you know, I like to remind people that I

started out as an online editor in the 90s

when they were the rock stars because there weren't

colorists and online editors were

where the money was.

Right.

Yeah.

And then the industry

changed because of technology.

Funnily enough, doesn't

that sound familiar right now?

And it essentially wiped online editors off the map

and it became a fairly low end job

for in many cases.

And so online editors went

up and did different things.

But a small number of people stayed online editors

and sat at the top end of the market.

It's always a place for that

bespoke, very highly skilled stuff.

That's what I did ended up keeping on doing.

Actually, Jamie was was one of them as well.

Jamie and I both, you know, continued at that high

end of being online editors of the few

that continued for many more years.

And we're able to make a decent living that way and

continue to be the rock stars.

You know, the online editor is so cool.

Right.

But, you know, but the thing is that there is so

there is always a place for, you know,

for that as well.

It will continue.

There's just less of it.

And so I think it's important to remember,

especially as there's a lot of uncertainty

now about change because of technology.

The job you do today may not may not continue to be

the same, but we're also not going to

be the same person and you're not going to enjoy

doing the same things and technology

changes and changes and everything changes.

And there is we're always going to evolve.

Yeah, I mean, I also you know, those of us grew up

in this business in the 90s and I

started in this business in late 89.

In fact, Ken Sirulnick on the call, he and I started

it was our first job in Manhattan,

Northeast video, I think it was 1989.

And so I'd be we both in our own ways, we follow

different paths, became online editors.

And it was really actually a pretty straightforward

transition into colorist because the pitch

was I know what makes pictures look great.

Right.

I've been delivering

straight to broadcast for a decade.

And so now if you want to hire someone who can get

something out of, you know, a Symphony

or Final Cut Pro or whatever it was at the time, we

were able to naturally just step

into that role.

And now we're about to go and I'm going to now

morph this into the second part of our

discussion.

We have 15 minutes, which is

the next big transition I see.

I mean, we've had some technology transitions over

the last 20 years since nonlinear editing

computer based editing came out.

I think color management and digital cinema cameras

are the two that kind of grew up side

by side.

One kind of begat the other.

And so we're seeing all of that kind of come to

fruition now that we've now we've got high

dynamic range and wider color gamut.

So now the palette is starting to

grow for digital colorists and artists.

But and that's a transition.

But I think the next transition we're really going

to see like, is there something equivalent

to online editing to nonlinear

editing, you know, analog to digital?

I think without a doubt, machine learning has to be

the big like, you know, there's

a siren going off and you

need to be looking at that siren.

If nothing else, keep paying attention to it.

Right.

I'm not saying that you right now need to become a

prompt engineer for whatever.

Right.

That's yeah, exactly.

That's not what I'm saying needs to happen.

But Katie, you've you've been around this.

You've written for Mixing

Light on this several times.

You know, right now, October 2024,

where do you see this happening?

And then kind of in your mind, if you can hook that

into like the the post-production

survey and how you think it's impacting those

trends or what we should be looking for in

this year's survey.

Yeah, no, I think that's an excellent, excellent

challenge for me, Pat, to talk about two very

different parts of my knowledge base.

No, that's very good.

Look, I've been you know, I started out my career

as this plucky smart kid who got thrown

all the new technology stuff.

I now I'm a plucky, smart, older kid or who still

gets thrown the technology stuff.

But it's you know, it's always

been a big part of my my interest.

And I think we're all here because we're all

curious about things and we're all we're all

creative technologists.

We all are, I think, to an extent some more

creative, some more technologists, but we're

all creative technologists and what

we do is we use technology to make art.

That's what we do.

And whether that technology is film strips or

whether technology is computers, that's

what we do.

We we manipulate science to make art.

And I think we will always do that.

There is one thing I can say for 100% sure is that

computers by their very nature, by

the very nature of being a computer cannot be

artists cannot be creative.

But they can be a tool to make art.

And the other thing I can say for being very deep

under the hood of a number of these AI

companies is that they all want to make money.

And if they want to make money off artists who are

the users of those tools, they're

not going to put those users out of business,

they're going to start at least by at least

by making things that we want.

And that's really interesting.

So it's actually so it's actually what you're

saying is actually in their interest not to

put us out of business is what you're saying.

Because we are their customers.

Okay, you think about if you think about all of

these NLEs, if you think about

Adobe and we are their customers,

why would they put us out of business?

But so they are going to, you know, they are going

to make tools that benefit us.

Now obviously, that doesn't mean like any

technology, no technology is neither inherently

good nor bad.

It is what you do with it.

And people are always going to do good things and

bad things with technology.

We know that we've seen that look at the internet.

I mean, is it inherently good or inherently bad?

It is neither, but people do good

and bad things with the internet.

So it's going to be the same with with AI, machine

learning and all the things that come

out of it.

Cognitive computing,

whatever else is going to be good.

It's going to be people that do good things and

people that do bad things.

It's already the case.

So it's what we do with it.

And certainly, these companies are going to make

tools for us that they want us to buy.

So they're going to make tools

that are really useful to us.

And they're engaging a lot with the creative

community to see what it is that we actually

give a shit about wanting to buy.

And they're saying, oh, we're going to do something

that colorist never have to be colorist

anymore.

Everyone's going to go,

but I like being a colorist.

Why would I not want to be a colorist?

I don't want to buy that.

But in theory, though, this

tool that's going to make it.

But the pushback on that, the pushback on that is,

well, I'm a producer and I don't

want to pay the colorist because they make so much

money that they actually make commission

off of what I'm paying the big post.

Absolutely.

So I can speak to that too.

And that's something that I've looked at a lot

because that's something I tend to look

about 10 years in the future.

So about for the last 10

years, I've been looking into that.

So there's it's just like everything else.

When producers got their hands on final cut pro,

did we stop having editors?

Producers were able to.

The time was we'll be able to

get it done in half the time.

And what really ended up happening is

you just cut twice as many versions.

That's all that happened.

That's right.

So I think what I think what happens is that there

is going to be a lot of auto color correct.

There already is.

Right.

There's a whole lot of auto grade my shit.

But is that the audience knows the difference

between the good stuff and the bad stuff.

They can see it.

And there's always going to be a place for the for

the beautiful and the bespoke.

And it's always going to

be a place to auto correct.

And there is now and there has been for a while and

it's going to continue like that.

So we're not going to have a producer of a major

feature film or even a small feature

film doing an auto correct.

They're always going to want

to - shove a LUT on it is not new.

And there's not much that AI can do.

That's not that's going to be any any more or less

touching your world than those things

touch now.

So you know those things that exist now, LUTs and

auto correct and filters and things like

that.

And how should they really affect your world?

Probably very little.

So really there's not a lot else beyond that that

is going to be used by those same people

that's going to say make it

look like Michael Bay film.

Well, they're doing that today.

It's just going to be easier for them to do that.

But yeah, it's true.

I mean, it's like, you know, I

want the Michael Bay LUT, right?

Or they see a commercial.

Can I get the LUT for that commercial?

So now they don't even have

to actually how that happens.

Yeah, exactly.

They're just going to make it easier for that

because there's always going to be that stuff

at the low end, always.

So when it comes to that, when tools get better and

they can, I don't know, edit themselves

a commercial, they're still going to get themselves

a commercial with just whatever crap they

do today is similar.

It's the very different

markets of the professional market.

And it just means that a lot of non-professionals

are going to be able to do stuff and they're

going to be do see how to do stuff that looks

vaguely okay, that emulates a professional

look.

But the audiences can tell we can always tell.

And there is going to be, I

think I've said this for a long time.

I think that the audiences, especially when these

technologies start to impact people,

the middle class, everyday people, they're going to

start also seeing the value in the

handmade stuff.

We're going to stay going to start seeing because

it's the same as what happened when

when people were able to stream media for free.

Suddenly, suddenly there was a difference between

the stuff you had to pay for.

There was a bigger value on the stuff you had to

pay for than the stuff you get for

free.

So as people start seeing that there is less value

in stuff that is generated by AI

because they can just do it for free, you're going

to see that there's more value on the

stuff that is generated by

people and that is very human done.

I've predicted for a long time, I think there'll be

a rise in this bespoke aesthetic and

bespoke value on things that are bespoke.

I think there'll be additional value placed on

things for people where people feel like

there's something that reminds them of a time when

everything was done by hand.

We don't know what that's going to look like, but

there's probably going to be a version

of the newspaper, the radio.

I think we see podcasts reminds

people of listening to the radio.

I think there's going to be versions of these

things that people put value on and pay for

because they stop putting value on the things that

they perceive as having no value because

it's created by a computer.

When all commercials start looking the same because

they're all computer generated, people

are going to go, "Well, that's kind of dumb and we

know that they did it for free."

They're going to put real value on the stuff that

looks like it was done by a human.

So true creativity is going

to start having greater value.

In the same way as people are starting to see that

there's greater value in the human

touch in things like healthcare and childcare and

schooling and teaching and all of those

things, I think it's going to happen the same in

creative and the creative arts.

The audiences are going to start demanding the

stuff that is more creative and not looking

the same as everything else.

The weird, which is why we're here.

We love it because we're all a bit weird, but I

think the weird stuff is what really

shows that it's done by a human and not by a

computer because it's not the same as everything

else.

You can already see it even in the box office.

The Tent Poles are starting to get less empty.

They're called superhero fatigue.

What that really means is that it sounds to feel a

bit the same because people aren't

taking risks in terms of what we're starting to see

is that people are really paying money

to go to the movies to see something weird.

Those are the movies.

Yeah, something they weren't expecting.

They want to be surprised.

Those are the things that are getting the Oscars.

That's what's getting the Oscars now.

I also think with the rise of machine learning and

machine learning technology, a couple

of things.

One is I think what we're running into is that the

easy 80% in terms of what machine

learning can accomplish has been accomplished.

Now we're at that top 20% where we want to take it

to that next level where we really

want it to do actual work that

replicates what a human would do.

That's the 20-year challenge.

It's like all of a sudden what looked like it was

two years away is forever two years

away for the next 20 years because every percentage

incremental improvement takes

way more resources, way more effort to get there.

What I'm observing is really

happening in terms of some of those advances.

I don't think colorists are going

to be that impacted, to be honest.

I think you guys are pretty fine.

I think the visual effects industry is where

there's a lot of opportunity for AI machine

learning to contribute.

It already is.

It already has been.

They're also big adopters of technology.

What I'm observing is that where that stuff is

actually being focused in terms of research

and tool development is that it's actually not

replacing the artists in Hollywood.

It's replacing the artists in the sweatshops.

We all know, I'm very honest and very transparent

about this, but I think we all know the unspoken

secret about visual effects is that a large portion

of visual effects work is done in

sweatshops.

It's done in third world countries in actual

literal sweatshops and sweatshop labor.

I think there's a really interesting moral

discussion to be had and there's probably

another insight at some point

around what is the real moral choice?

Is it keeping people in sweatshops

or is it displacing them with AI?

Right now it's both because AI is the joke in the

AI community is that it stands for

Absent Indians because it's also generally done.

I haven't heard that.

Mechanical Turks, most of AI is actually a bit of a

smokescreen anyway, but as it gets

better, it stops being so much that and it is going

to displace sweatshop labor.

I think there's something really interesting in

terms of talking about that and understanding

the economics and the morals of that.

That's really where our industry is

going to be the most impacted by AI.

The jobs that are going to be impacted by AI are

the sweatshop workers in third world

countries that are doing a lot of this work for us.

I think it was in a

discussion with Jamie this week.

I think Jamie and I chatted earlier this week and I

think Jamie, you were the one who introduced

me to Strata, which is Michael

Cione's new endeavor that he's working on.

I took a quick look at their YouTube channel.

I took a quick look at their product.

It's a machine learning product.

It was really interesting because I came to the

conclusion they seem to be focusing the

product on multi-cam productions that are

generating thousands of hours of footage where

the problem is it overwhelms humans.

Humans literally can't get on top of all the data.

You just can't hire enough interns to watch

everything, to tag everything, to make it

usable for a story editor to

come in and start finding stuff.

Then the video editors start looking for the right

B-rolls and coverage and all that stuff.

The machine learning in that instance seems to be

from the public side that I could see

on their YouTube channel where there's overwhelm.

That's another good place for these types of tools.

Although, I got to say, I wouldn't mind some AI

normalization and maybe some AI shot matching.

That stuff exists as well.

But is it good?

I don't know.

Tony, jump right in here.

I just want to add one thing that I

learned early in my freelance career.

I think this may apply to those working at boutique

facilities or your owner-operator and

to some extent to your working

at a Company 3 or whatever.

I think early on when I learned when I was working

as an online editor back in the 90s

is when I would ask the client,

"Why do you want to work with me?"

The client told me, "Well, 30% of what you bring to

the table is your technical execution.

How fast are you?

How quick can you get this job done?"

But 70% is personality.

The reason I wanted to work with me over the senior

day editor was because he was a little

anal and he wouldn't want to

put in over time at five o'clock.

He's like, "I'm out of here."

I was accommodating to

say, "I love working with you.

I want to invest in this project."

Now, working as a colorist.

When I play down the shows that I work on, I take

note of the names of the people so

that when I refer to them, instead of saying, "Oh,

you want to go to the shot of the person

wearing that funky tie?

No.

You want to go to Joe blah, blah, blah."

That's cool.

That's cool.

It shows to the client that I invested the project

that I actually know the characters

who are in whatever my documentary

feature from or whatever it might be.

But that too, I think is very important because in

the end, when you look at what does a client

want to work with you, the question you got to ask

is, "Well, what is the value added

we bring to the client?

Is it a combination of your personality, your

technical and creative skills?

And also, is it a willingness to accommodate their

own creative and technical needs?"

The best comment I got from a client recently is

they wrote and said, "Tony was very accommodating.

He was more than willing to do the little things

that went out of his way."

Part of it was because they wanted me to re-edit

some of the stuff in the timeline.

And usually, if the colorist, it's

like, "No, the picture is locked.

I can't do that."

But I'm like, "It's no big deal."

And they even said to me,

"You can do that resolve."

I said, "Oh, yeah, it's got a little edit page and

I can go in there and change stuff

around."

And the way I look at it, it's like maybe someone

else in a higher position would have

said, "Nope, that's getting hit back to the

colorist assistant or the conforme artist

or whatever."

And the way I look at it is, "I'm here right now.

I have the God-given skill sets to do this.

Why would I not do it?"

But when she...

I think, Tony, what you're

describing is I like to call it a partnership.

I think some people see it as a relationship of

power and that you are a servant or you

are a master, essentially, to your client.

And you can be one of either or both.

But rather, I think the best...

The people who build the best relationships and

have the most success in building those

relationships are those who

treat it as a partnership.

And if you truly treat it as a partnership and you

go in there and set those expectations

and lay it that way, that this is a partnership

between artists and artists, you end up just

getting so much amazing feedback and you end up

building those kind of relationships that

you can help each other's

careers grow, which is really cool.

Exactly.

And I think...

Yeah.

And Tony, I'm going to wrap us up here because we

are at our hour and Katie is on vacation.

This is a perfect place to

wrap up with Katie on vacation.

So Katie, I know it's chilly

there, so kick on that fireplace.

Yes.

Warm up your hands and thank you

very much for carving time out for us.

I ask all of you one thing, please.

Please, if you have not

taken the survey, take it, Pat.

Yes.

And please do me one favor and make sure that the

important thing is we make sure people

know about it.

So please, encourage your

networks, your friends, your colleagues.

Anybody who is in

post-production should be taking the survey.

It's pretty quick.

Every year there are bonus questions that are

relevant to what is happening and what

is important to people this year.

And this year is no different.

We have new bonus question for this year based on

some of the big conversations.

I like to keep it a secret, so it makes you go out

there and actually do the survey.

Things that are really in the

conversation, they're in every conversation.

And those things we measure in the bonus questions.

I think that's interesting because people want to

know what everybody else thinks.

And that's really what this is.

This is a community building exercise.

This is making our industry a better

place and it takes you two minutes.

You can contribute as well.

So I put the link up in the chat.

Postproductiondata.com is where you'll get all of

the information from every other year,

every report, and the link to the survey is there.

You can click right through and take the survey and

then explore some of the other data.

Yeah, absolutely.

100%.

We'll have the links on the website.

Mixing Light will be sending out emails to its email

database reminding people to do this.

And I'll probably take a snippet of this

conversation and maybe do

MixiLite's first YouTube short.

Cool.

Talking specifically about

this and see what happens on that.

So who knows, you know,

old dog learning new tricks.

So thank you, Katie.

Thank you, Jamie and Tony and

everyone else in the chat today.

Thank you for coming out on a Sunday.

This is Patrick Inhofer from MixingLight.com and we

will see you in our next Office Hours Live.